It’s that time of year again and we at araxam.com are preparing for another exciting week at Inbound15. If you’re not already familiar with it, Inbound is probably the most exciting marketing conference of the year. It kicks off the day after Labor Day at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center and will feature inspiring keynotes, innovative talks, educational breakouts, hands-on lessons, and tons of networking.
No matter which track, agenda, or session you choose, you really can’t go wrong at Inbound. You’ll find something of interest everywhere you look from inbound marketing seminars and keynotes to new product releases and featured training on HubSpot’s software. Previous keynote speakers have included Arianna Huffington, Simon Sinek, Nate Silver, and Scott Harrison.
The entire conference will be a blast, but theres a few particular speakers I really can’t wait to see. Here is my list in no particular order.
Scott Brinker
Scott Brinker has over 20 years experience at the intersection of marketing, IT, and software product development. He is the co-founder and CTO of ion interactive, a marketing software company and the author of the Chief Marketing Technologist blog (chiefmartec.com) where he writes about the evolution of strategy, management, and culture at the intersection of marketing and technology.
I discovered Mr. Brinker through the article he co-authored with Laura McLellan for the Harvard Business Review entitled The Rise of the Chief Marketing Technologist. He is also the program chair of MarTech: The Marketing Tech Conference and his talks on this growing field are can’t miss events.
Scott will be covering a session at Inbound15 called “Hacking Marketing: What Marketers Can Learn from Software Developers.” This session will explore the parallels between software development and marketing to give marketers a powerful set of management approaches for succeeding in the digital world.
John Jantsch
John Jantsch is the author of Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine, The Commitment Engine, and Duct Tape Selling. Duct Tape Marketing should be required reading for anyone in the business and marketing arena. His blog was chosen as a Forbes favorite for marketing and small business and his podcast, a top ten marketing show on iTunes, was called a “must listen” by Fast Company magazine.
Mr. Jantsch will be speaking about “How to Build a Producer Business Model that Goes Beyond You.” In the producer model, you’ll be the center of your client’s needs assembling a team of providers coordinated around a single methodology and marketing point of view. In this session, you’ll learn: How to attract the right clients; How to develop your core point of view; How to build your personal brand authority; How to train clients to get the most value; How to assemble the best of best on your team; How to organize and manage client engagements; How to use on online toolset to run your business .
I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Jantsch last year and it was one of the highlights of the conference for me!
Paul Roetzer
In February 2004, Paul Roetzer came to a life-changing realization – the marketing-agency model was broken and had been for years. Having spent the previous six years as a consultant and vice president at a traditional public relations agency, he could see it first-hand. Billable hours were inefficient at best, there was no innovation within the industry, training and education were stagnant, and standard measurement systems had no real connection to bottom-line results. Paul became obsessed with evolving the marketing agency model and in November 2005, he launched PR 20/20.
PR 20/20 is a Cleveland-based inbound marketing agency, specializing in public relations, content marketing, search marketing and social media where Paul serves as founder and CEO. Additionally, he authored two excellent books. The Marketing Agency Blueprint serves as a guide on how to build a marketing agency for the digital age and The Marketing Performance Blueprint is an actionable and innovative guide that takes a scientific approach to marketing.
Mr. Roetzer is covering two sessions this year. In “Point Pricing: An Inside Look at PR 20/20’s Value-Based Pricing Model,” Roetzer will share origins of the concept, challenges faced in constructing the model, lessons learned in rolling it out to clients, and tips for how agencies can re-imagine their own pricing models to drive growth and unlock profits. “Marketing Growth Hackathon: 25 Tips, Tools and Resources to Accelerate Performance” is for you if you want to learn how to build a performance-driven organization that exceeds ROI expectations and outpaces the competition. At the end of this session you will be able to: 1. Prioritize and simplify your marketing goals. 2. Construct dynamic campaigns with the greatest probabilities of impacting business results. 3. Apply new technologies and processes to improve efficiencies and accelerate success.
Learn more about Paul Roetzer from his brief Q&A on Marketing Technology.
Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah
Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah are the cofounders of HubSpot. They met as graduate students at MIT and their success with the blog OnStartups.com, in addition to Mr. Halligan’s experience with marketing in the real world, led them to a conclusion. The conclusion was the old way of marketing was no longer working and a new approach was needed. From these discussions they created the theory of inbound marketing and founded the company HubSpot to help other organizations to a marketing revolution.
Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah are joint keynote speakers at Inbound15 and their keynote is always one of the best of the conference. They usually use their time to announce new features (such as last year’s announcement of the new HubSpot CRM), so we are very eagerly anticipating this event.
Ann Handley
Ann Handley is a veteran of creating and managing digital content to build relationships for organizations and individuals. Ann is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content and Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business. She is the Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs; a columnist for Entrepreneur magazine; a LinkedIn Influencer; a keynote speaker, mom, and writer.
Ann will be covering a session entitled “Good Content vs. Good Enough Content: A Fight for Sore Eyes”. Come to this fun session to hear Ann Handley counsel you on creating content that’s engaging, because your audience demands it and your company or organization deserves it. You’ll leave better equipped to: tell better (and braver!) stories, using stronger, more ripped writing and a unique point of view; create “best of breed” content to attract the people you want (and repel the ones you don’t); when to be a little outrageous (and when to dial it back); secrets to inspiring the best work out of writers and content creators; and finally (for all you skeptics): how to get this stuff approved. The biggest missed opportunity in content marketing is playing it too safe.
Jonah Peretti
Jonah Peretti is co-founder and CEO of BuzzFeed, the first true social news organisation that provides a pioneering mix of breaking news, entertainment and shareable content. Mr. Peretti, known for creating viral hits, tracking online social behaviour and building technology to amplify buzz is also a co-founder of The Huffington Post. He has been called a “viral marketing hotdog” by The New York Times, “the poster boy of guerilla media” by AlterNet and a “computer-whiz” by The New Yorker. Fast Company named Mr. Peretti one of the “New Faces of Social Media”, BusinessInsider listed him as one of the “11 Rising Tech Stars to Watch in 2012” and he is one of Fortune’s “40 Under 40 for 2012.”
Mr. Peretti is part of the Spotlights track at Inbound15.
Larry Kim
Larry Kim is the founder and Chief Technology Officer at WordStream Inc., responsible for outbound marketing efforts and driving product vision. He is a writer for Inc. Magazine and a columnist at several featured online publications such as Search Engine Land.
Mr. Kim will be speaking on “The Top Ten Social Media Advertising Hacks of All Time.” Learn unusual tips, strategies and process for getting 10-100x more value from paid ad campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Linkedin & Google+, including how to drive exponentially more traffic to your content, and convert 3-5x more of those clicks into leads and sales – all for less than $50 per campaign! Attendees will gain critical insights into how the algorithms of Paid Social Media advertising REALLY work, including Relevancy Score and Quality Adjusted Bids, which govern how often your ads show and what you pay for them. A must-attend session for Content, Social Media and PPC Marketers alike.
Brené Brown
Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. She has spent the past twelve years studying vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame. Brené is the author of two #1 New York Times Bestsellers; Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the way we Live, Love, Parent, and Lead and The Gifts of Imperfection.
Brené’s 2010 TEDx Houston talk, The Power of Vulnerability, is one of the top five most viewed TED talks in the world, with over 14 million viewers (see video below). Additionally, Brené gave the closing talk at the 2012 TED conference where she talked about shame, courage, and innovation.
Dr. Brown is a keynote speaker at Inbound15.
Quite honestly, there isn’t a single presenter I’m not looking forward to seeing and hearing at this year’s Inbound conference. Currently I’m going to have to figure out how to be in 5 places at once, unless I can whittle down my agenda over the next few days.
Who are you most looking forward to seeing at Inbound15? Let us know in the comments below.